Omobola Johnson, Minister of Communication Technology

Since the creation of the Omobola Johnson-led Ministry of Communication Technology in 2011, there has been some progress in bridging the digital divide between Nigeria and the rest of the world. Still there are complaints aplenty.

The poor quality of telecom services has been a consistent pain for both the subscribers and regulators says Ogochukuwu Ifegbuna, a systems database analyst, who believes this could have been curtailed if the ministry had lived up to its responsibilities.

“I do not see any improvement in the ICT sector because many of the issues we faced in 2011 are still here. For example, I still do not understand why the quality of network should be as low as it is. “

“Nigeria currently has one of the largest bandwidths in the world due to the fibre-optic channels we have running here, and yet to access good 3D network is a problem. This is something the ministry should have addressed and they still have not. I am scoring them a ‘D’ just for leniency sake,” he stated.

Taking a similar position, Adebayo Ogunseye, Chief Executive Officer of DodgeComm Ltd, an information technology service provider says: “The issues we have had to deal with last year are basically the same ones we have been battling with for about a decade.

“Since the initial push in the early 2000s when the big telecom and IT giants rushed in to take advantage of the large market our population offers, we are yet to see any other major milestone. Instead, what we have are situations where foreign investors are frustrated out of the country due to the ridiculous amount of corruption shoved down their throat by government officials.”

When asked to rate the ministry’s performance, he said, “If I am to assess them, I will give them an E.”

Although there is some displeasure at the slow pace of achievement in the ICT sector, with the surge in the use of social media and technological gadgets, the sector took some major strides in 2012.

Juliet Ibeh, a CISCO certified database analyst says liberalisation of the telecoms sector, as well as improvement in rural telephony, are commendable efforts backed by the ministry.

“I am pretty sure almost all the villages and remote towns in the country have some access to GSM service. They might not be able to get full internet service but at least they can make phone-calls. That is something we could not do about 10 years ago.

“Plus we should not forget the national registration exercise that they tried to do with the telecoms companies. If the ministry had not put its foot down and insisted that it should be done, many of them would have run away from it because of the additional cost.

“And all the IT companies have had to sit up because it has become an open field where once you have the expertise, you have a fair chance to deliver on a job. So this makes competition stiff and ensures that customers get value for their money. This is why I am giving them a ‘C’ because I know they can do better,” she said.

Highlighting some of the recurring challenges operators face, Ms. Funke Opeke, Chief Executive Officer of Main One Cable, Africa’s largest fibre-optic laying company, at a recent meeting fingered poor infrastructure as a leading cause.

She said, “It is not that we do not have the capacity to generate enough but there are infrastructural challenges which need to be addressed for optimal usage of the already available resources.”

In the ministry’s defence, Johnson says the sector is improving but still has a long way to go.

“The software industry is fledgling and fragmented. There are a number of young people who have developed software for the local and international market but it is not well co-ordinated. So first of all we are trying to bring standards in terms of software development.”

To flag this off, the minister at the start of 2012 announced the launch of IT incubation centres for small and medium scale entrepreneurs. The centres, she claimed, would begin to teach these entrepreneurs ways to commercialize their products by the end of the year 2012. A software training programme for five hundred youths was organised and not much else has been heard about that.